2018 Reports

Climate Change Impacts on the Bulk Power System: Assessing Vulnerabilities and Planning for Resilience

Gundlach, Justin M.; Webb, Romany M.

As the scale, speed, and implications of climate change come into focus, stakeholders in the electricity sector are finding it increasingly difficult to turn a blind eye. However, many have opted to attend to climate impacts in a piecemeal fashion, often merely responding to particular extreme events—or types of extreme events, such as coastal storms or floods—and failing to consider the larger phenomenon. This is true of the bulk power system (BPS) in regions overseen by Independent System Operators and Regional Transmission Organizations (collectively, ISO/RTOs), none of which have comprehensively assessed their systems’ vulnerabilities to climate change. This paper collects recent research highlighting the implications of climate change for the BPS and explains how ISO/RTOs can assess and respond to them.